Stars : Madonna: Madonna's Music Videos : Visuals & Lyrics

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftXHKfbXeBM

"Like A Prayer"

Life is a mystery

Everyone must stand alone

I hear you call my name

And it feels like home

When you call my name its like a little prayer

I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there

In the midnight hour I can feel your power

Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there

I hear your voice, its like an angel sighing

I have no choice, I hear your voice

Feels like flying

I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm falling

Out of the sky, I close my eyes

Heaven help me

In 1989, Madonna released what has been called her greatest and most personal record to date - "Like a Prayer" (1988). In the amid the dissolution of her marriage, the turning 30^th Madonna has a lot in her mind, especially facing the age at which her mother had died, and thus she experienced more emotional turmoil.

Madonna songs often related to her life experience. The recorded of “Like a Prayer”(1988) believed revolves around the mother, which is a childhood trauma that had a strong part in making the singer who she is. As the mother is a pious Catholic, her death seems to make Madonna question about religious. Even though “Like a Prayer”(1988) is a album that mostly sound religious, we could see that the contradictory and as well as an “ending” to her question with a song at the end of the album – Act of Contrition. The song is about Madonna is mad because she “does not have a reservation”, a reservation she was supposed to have because she has prayed which I see that she is trying to state the irony of the existence of the religious and the influence that it did to the believers.

This album “Like a prayer”(1988) serves it's controversial propose, especially the debut “Like a Prayer”. The record sounds religious, especially with the caroling that heighten up the religious spirit. However, if you have study Madonna whole album, or her star image, you would find that this song is with an undertone of sexual tension. The liturgical context is added with dual meaning, and this has provoked the taboo back then in the 1989.

The sexual hint in the lyrics for example first verse for "Like a Prayer"(1988) which goes "When you call my name, It's like a little prayer, I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there” are referring to someone performing oral sex. Not just the song itself, the song’s video was quite controversial as well.

Retrieved from "Like A Prayer" (1988)

Studying the images of the music video, we see that Madonna has address racism and depict a mixed-race couple, which is a forbidden interracial love affair back then. She emphasizes the equal status among different race.

Retrieved from "Like A Prayer" (1988)

In the music video, Madonna sings the line “When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer” while the crime scene is shown in detail, noted the woman is killed and the black man who trying to save was thrown in jail. However, Madonna does nothing about it, thus portraying failure of divinity to save. The images are stating the controversy of “White men rape or kill but black men are thrown in jail”.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cross_Lighting_2005.jpg

According to Metz , the intermediate verse amidst a field of burning crosses was believed portraying the murder scene of three civil workers in the 1988 American crime drama film Mississippi Burning.

Retrieved from "Like A Prayer" (1988)

Madonna brought up the controversy of the Ku Klux Klan. During the Ku Klux Klan murders in Mississippi Burning, only 1 black man protested. In the music video, Madonna dances with the choir in the altar of the church, a young Black boy joins her.

Retrieved from "Like A Prayer" (1988)

Racial equality, sex ecstasy, religious issue was questioned and portrayed in this music video. These portray female empowerment as women are usually a taboo for political, sex nor has the chance to raise religious issue but Madonna did it all.

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_Y740aReI

"Justify My Love"

I want to kiss you in Paris

I want to hold your hand in Rome

I want to run naked in a rainstorm

Make love in a train cross-country

You put this in me

So now what, So now what?

Wanting, Waiting, Needing

For you to justify my love

Hoping, Praying

For you to justify my love

I want to know you

Not like that

I don't want to be your mother

I don't want to be your sister either

I just want to be your lover

I want to be your baby

Kiss me, thats right, Kiss me

Yearning, burning

For you to justify my love

What are you gonna do

Talk to me - Tell me your dreams

Am I in them

Tell me your fears

Are you scared?

Tell me your stories

I'm not afraid of who you are

We can fly!

Poor is the man

Whose pleasures depend on

The permission of another

Love me, thats right, Love me

I want to be your baby

Madonna appeared as a role model for woman symbolizes professional and personal independence in a male-dominated society, as well as sexual liberation. She has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives by showing how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny by herself in each of her works.

In the video ‘Justify my love’ (1993), she depicted the combination of Catholicism and a woman who dominates her own sex.